The Practice of Sigrid Sandström
Sigrid Sandström is a Swedish painter, video artist, and graphic artist. Her creative practice is defined by graphic abstraction and an embrace of color alongside variations in scale. She utilizes a diverse array of techniques to apply paint and other materials to canvas, including the use of cloths, rugs, masking with tape, squeegee-ing, smearing, and collaging. Her work often explores the subject of landscape, creating a tension through the interplay between traditional naturalism and geometric fragmentation as the works teeter on the verge of abstraction.
Beyond the canvas, Sandström has worked in film and video, sculpture, and installation. Her professional contributions to the field include serving as the editor of the publication Material Matters: Painting and Its Materialities and co-editing the anthology Ignorance: Between Knowing and Not Knowing. She also produced Studio Talks: Thinking Through Painting and published Grey Hope: The Persistence of Melancholy.
Education and Academic Career
Born in Stockholm, Sweden, Sandström pursued an extensive academic path in fine art. She earned a bachelor's degree from Academie Minerva in the Netherlands in 1997 and participated in an exchange program at The Cooper Union in New York City. In 2001, she graduated with a master's in fine art from the Yale School of Art. Her academic involvement includes time at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine and the Core Residency Program at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas.
Currently, Sandström serves as a Professor of Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts / Uniarts, Helsinki. Her previous teaching positions include roles at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm, Bard College in New York, and MassArt in Boston. Her recognition in the arts includes receiving a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant.
